


Abdicating a Self-Titled Throne

by fabulously_frenzied



Category: The Owl House (Cartoon)
Genre: basically toh but it's from eda's perspective, because you KNOW eda swears, rated for mild swearing, we just don't hear it because it's a kids' show produced by disney
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-15
Updated: 2021-01-15
Packaged: 2021-03-12 21:01:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,421
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28766745
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fabulously_frenzied/pseuds/fabulously_frenzied
Summary: abdicate [ab-di-keyt]verbto renounce or relinquish a throne, right, power, claim, responsibility, or the like; to give up or renounceEda Clawthorne, the infamous Owl Lady, has lived pretty much on her own, running a scam business and avoiding the law, for the past several years. Peddling human "treasure," she's seen a lot in her day.She never expected to end up with an actualhumanon her hands.Or,The Owl House,but from Eda's perspective.
Kudos: 15





	Abdicating a Self-Titled Throne

**Author's Note:**

> Hey frenz! Let me begin by saying I love _The Owl House._ I love the story that Dana Terrace has chosen to share with us, and I respect that it's the story she wants to share. I write this fic not to fix something wrong with the show, but because I want to see more of parts of it I think have gone relatively unexplored.
> 
> The trope of "quirky young protagonist that doesn't fit in stumbles into a fantastical realm, meets a crotchety old mentor, and realizes a new potential not possible in their home world" has been done several times over, and _The Owl House_ happens to be one of my favorite iterations of that trope. But how many times do we see the life of the crotchety old mentor, the one who takes in our boisterous young protagonist, the one assigned the role of the teacher, but ends up learning so much more from their student in the process? Imagine, if you will: Luz's story through Eda's eyes. An unruly outcast going seemingly nowhere with her life, fighting a curse she can hardly control, and suddenly a creature from another _dimension_ drops into her life. Imagine getting to see Eda's world change, brighten, simply by getting to know Luz and watching her grow. Imagine _that_ story.
> 
> With full respect and appreciation to Dana Terrace and the whole crew behind _The Owl House,_ I hope I can make that story real for you.

Human treasure day was, without a doubt, always my favorite day of the week. Stocking up on artifacts from another realm that any wide-eyed rube will pay top dollar for just to own something nobody else in the Boiling Isles owns, and it’s all just junk the humans leave laying around! There is literally no downside to this system: I take all the human junk, with Owlbert’s help, for totally free; I sell it to anyone and everyone who looks easy enough to scam; I narrowly avoid getting arrested, or getting stuck with some loser asking me to go out with them (it changes every week); and my money and I go home at the end of the day. Everybody wins!

(Well, no, not everybody, now that I think about it. But I do. I win!)

I have to admit, despite all the wonderful collectibles it’s provided me with, the human world must be pretty boring. I mean, if all their fantasy is glimmers of our reality, how exciting can _their_ reality be? Makes me wonder what kind of havoc I could wreak upon those pitiful, ignorant creatures. I’d have them bowing down to me faster than King’s ego can inflate! But if I moved out of the Isles, I’d have no one to steal all my stolen junk to, so that’s a bummer. Besides, if I left, the title of Most Powerful Witch would go to someone else, and I can’t let that happen.

I’d been largely unimpressed with Owlbert’s latest haul—seriously, what do I pay him for? A couple of shinies, some kind of dull tablet, a book…

…a book that just got snatched out of my hand?

There was a kid running away with that book! And so what if these were all stolen goods? _No one_ steals from me.

I started to chase after that kid when there was a sudden clutch at my chest, startling me enough that I lost my footing and fell. _Dammit_. I'd taken my daily potion earlier, right? I thought I’d just refilled on those last week! I didn’t have time for magical complications, I had a thief to catch!

With more than a little huffing and puffing (I _don’t_ want to hear it), I found the little thief again behind my shop tent, cowering away from a little flesh-eating fairy. I almost wanted to laugh. Really? Those things were hardly any scarier than _bees._ The bite might bruise a little bit, but their teeth are nowhere near sharp enough to pierce a witch’s skin.

“Am I in the bad place?” the kid asked, and I noticed: round ears.

_Round ears?_

…Maybe Owlbert did a better job today than I’d thought. 

* * *

I had another roommate now. And I really don’t know how I’d allowed that to happen; between King and Hooty, the Owl House started to feel like the Nut House most days. I really didn’t have much reason to keep a human hanging around, though the kid had figured out how to make one of my stolen treasures light up in a way that made everyone want to buy it, so there had to be some benefits to this situation, right?

I just hadn’t figured out what they were yet, that’s all.

The kid told me her name was Luz. Luz Noceda. So now I guess I didn’t have an excuse to continue referring to her as “the human,” but when had a lack of excuses ever stopped me? She practically begged me to teach her magic, and if she were literally anyone else I would have gladly accepted the challenge. But how in the hell was I supposed to teach magic to someone who biologically did not have the capacity to perform it? She seemed like an eager enough student and willing to do just about anything I asked (always a bonus), but she’s _human_. Humans aren’t magic. It wasn’t gonna work. 

So for the time being, I set her to doing some chores around the house, and I hate to admit it, but I felt a little bad. This kid—Luz—clearly didn’t want to be anywhere but in the Boiling Isles doing anything but learning to be a witch, and then we had that little pledge about “weirdos have to stick together,” and she rescued me from jail and from that loser warden, so I felt like I owed it to her. Now I was balancing double the roommates I had before (plus Hooty, I guess, but he doesn’t technically live _in_ the House), still making no progress on a curse over a decade old that was not getting better the more time passed, and somehow I was supposed to teach this girl magic.

Yep, being the most powerful witch in the Isles was not an easy position to maintain. But I’d do what I had to do to keep it.

  
  


I’d reached about 84 moons (that’s seven years old, according to Luz. Why count twelve moons? That seems like a really arbitrary number) when Emperor Belos came into power, and it _sucked_ that I couldn’t remember anything from what life was like before then. It’s all fuzzy, and somehow I didn’t think that was the curse getting to me. I think this is the part where some butthead makes the joke about “or maybe it’s just my age,” but I’ll _kindly_ remind you that Lilith is my _older_ sister, and she’s at… 372 moons? Or 31 years, I guess, as Luz would put it. You’ll have to excuse me; it’s been a while since she invited me to her birthday and the birthday party wasn’t a trap to try and get me to join the Emperor’s Coven.

(Gods, I miss my sister.)

Despite my missing memories of life before Belos, somehow I’d managed to hang onto this glimmer of an idea that magic didn’t strictly have to come from a bile sack, though I couldn’t imagine that doing magic by any other method that _wasn’t_ already programmed into my body was too much work to bother with. I may only have even noticed that it was even possible to do magic another way simply because the idea of making something needlessly harder for myself was laughable. We witches _evolved_ with magic to the point where it biologically integrated itself into our systems; why bother manufacturing spellcasting when we could simply think it into being?

Unfortunately, I didn’t really get the chance to continue not bothering to figure out obsolete methods of casting spells as a result of my daily potion disappearing from under my nose and _relapsing into a cursed monster_ with no control over my thoughts or actions. It’s about as fun as it sounds. And for the first time since meeting her, I was genuinely grateful I’d decided to take Luz in. I don’t wanna think about what could have happened if she hadn’t been there and somehow miraculously figured out that that archaic spellcasting could be done with as little as pencil and paper. (I refuse to admit my disappointment that I wasn’t the one to have taught her the only method of spellcasting she could possibly do, despite the fact that I never would have remembered how it was done. I’m just too damn proud.)

So maybe the k—maybe _Luz_ could make it here as a witch after all. But as much as I hated to entertain the thought, I knew that there really wasn’t much more that I, the most powerful witch in the Boiling Isles, could properly teach her. I had to face it: she only knew one spell, one she figured out entirely by chance, and I wouldn’t have known where to begin even attempting to teach her more. I could spew as much bullshit as I wanted about having to learn magic naturally (and those training wands they sell in that corner shop are _still_ a scam, and not even a good one, like the business I run), but my idea of “learning naturally” tended to center around talking a walk and screwing around in the forest, casting magic from whatever random thoughts entered my head. But I _owed_ this child my witchiness, my freedom, and quite possibly my sanity, and the only thing she’s asked for since stumbling into the Isles was to learn magic, and I couldn’t even do that for her in return.

Most powerful witch in the Boiling Isles, my ass. But maybe, just maybe, I could help someone else earn the title.

**Author's Note:**

> come have fun with me on tumblr! my main blog is @[holosapphic-warrior](https://holosapphic-warrior.tumblr.com/) but my writing blog is @[fabulously-frenzied](https://fabulously-frenzied.tumblr.com/). the reason I link both is because my writing blog is currently exclusively full of _Miraculous: Tales of Ladybug and Chat Noir_ content, but I may start to cycle _The Owl House_ content onto it and commit to it being a general writing/fandom blog. we'll see.


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